committed his emotions to verse form; and so perfect was his art reflected in his Ode to Evening that the reader finds himself under the same controlling spell that the quietude of summer evening in the country magically creates. Swinburne notes the similarity produced by Collins in verse and by Corot in painting. The poet was keenly disappointed when his volume of odes failed to sell. In a moment of cynicism he bought the unsold portion of the edition and ruthlessly destroyed the sheets. He at intervals after this resumed his poetic labors, but never with the intensity of his former hope. In 1748 he wrote, in honor of his friend James Thomson, that touching elegy so full of languorous beauty beginning with the stanza : In yonder grave a Druid lies, Where slowly winds the stealing wave! A year later he wrote that long poem, On the Popular Superstition of the Highlands, and in 1750 his Ode on the Music of the Grecian Theatre. In 1754 the crisis of a long smouldering nervous affection culminated in a violent attack of insanity that forced a temporary confinement in an asylum. Later he was released and was taken to the home of his sister in Chichester, where he remained until his death in 1759. He never regained his sanity. The fact that Collins left us so small an amount of verse needs to be supplemented by the additional fact that not all of it has come down to us. The records of his life hold titles, but the poems themselves have been lost. We know that the author was a severe critic of his own productions, and doubtless much of his work he deliberately destroyed. This is all the more credible because we know that his was an acutely nervous temperament too often ruled by mere whim. We are grateful for the poems that passed the muster of his scrutinizing eye and thus allowed the world to add to its anthology his ringing notes of patriotic passion and likewise those of a sweetly melancholy strain. LYRICS BY COLLINS ODE TO SIMPLICITY O THOU, by Nature taught To breathe her genuine thought In numbers warmly pure, and sweetly strong; Who first, on mountains wild, In Fancy, loveliest child, Thy babe, or Pleasure's, nursed the powers of song! Thou, who with hermit heart, Disdain'st the wealth of art, And gauds, and pageant weeds, and trailing pall, But com'st, a decent maid In Attic robe array'd, O chaste, unboastful Nymph, to thee I call! By all the honey'd store 5 10 On Hybla's thymy shore, By all her blooms and mingled murmurs dear; 15 By her whose love-lorn woe In evening musings slow Soothed sweetly sad Electra's poet's ear: By old Cephisus deep, Who spread his wavy sweep In warbled wanderings round thy green retreat; On whose enamell'd side, When holy Freedom died, No equal haunt allured thy future feet: O sister meek of Truth, To my admiring youth Thy sober aid and native charms infuse! Still ask thy hand to range their order'd hues. 20 25 30 While Rome could none esteem But Virtue's patriot theme, You loved her hills, and led her laureat band; To one distinguish'd throne; And turn'd thy face, and filed her alter'd land. No more, in hall or bower, The Passions own thy power; Love, only Love, her forceless numbers mean: Nor olive more, nor vine, Shall gain thy feet to bless the servile scene. Though taste, though genius, bless To some divine excess, 35 40 Faints the cold work till thou inspire the whole; 45 May court, may charm our eye; Of these let others ask To aid some mighty task; I only seek to find thy temperate vale; To maids and shepherds round, ODE WRITTEN IN 1746 How sleep the brave, who sink to rest By fairy hands their knell is rung, 5 There Honour comes, a pilgrim gray, To dwell a weeping hermit there! 10 THE PASSIONS AN ODE FOR MUSIC WHEN Music, heavenly maid, was young, From the supporting myrtles round They snatch'd her instruments of sound, First Fear his hand, its skill to try, Next Anger rush'd, his eyes on fire, In lightnings, own'd his secret stings; In one rude clash he struck the lyre And swept with hurried hand the strings. With woeful measures wan Despair, 'T was sad by fits, by starts 't was wild. But thou, O Hope, with eyes so fair, What was thy delighted measure? And bade the lovely scenes at distance hail! 30 35 A soft responsive voice was heard at every close; And Hope enchanted smiled, and waved her golden hair; And longer had she sung: Revenge impatient rose: but with a frown He threw his blood-stain'd sword in thunder down; And with a withering look The war-denouncing trumpet took And blew a blast so loud and dread, Were ne'er prophetic sounds so full of woe! And ever and anon he beat The doubling drum with furious heat; 40 And, though sometimes, each dreary pause between, Dejected Pity at his side Her soul-subduing voice applied, Yet still he kept his wild unalter'd mien, 45 50 While each strain'd ball of sight seem'd bursting from his head. Thy numbers, Jealousy, to nought were fix'd: Of differing themes the veering song was mix'd; 55 And now it courted Love, now raving call'd on Hate. With eyes up-raised, as one inspired, |